He went back to his sports page. Martha waited for the toast to pop. She was used to his disparaging remarks. There had been a time when she felt she did not deserve them. She had tried to keep herself pretty-looking, but Frank did not even seem to notice. Lately she had given up wearing makeup and arranging her hair in the morning. There seemed no point. She was thirty now. No one noticed her. She might as well make herself worthy of Frank's cutting comments.

Yet still they hurt. Martha had been twenty when she married Frank, who had been almost thirty. She had been crazy about the big handsome athlete who had just given up a minor league football career to become a high school coach. She had expected life with Frank to be warm and loving and secure. She had expected a family.

But Frank had soon made it clear that he did not want kids around. "I get enough of them at school," he told her. Martha had soon grown bored with her life as a housewife, but Frank had forbidden her to go to work. He made it clear that as far as he was concerned, her job as his wife was a full time concern.

Bored and frustrated, still Martha stayed with her big, hard-drinking husband. While he drank beer and watched TV, she read romance magazines about the things in life that seemed to be passing her by. She felt all her hurts and anxieties catching up with her as she stood over the toaster. Tears flowed down her cheeks. She tried not to sniffle to give herself away. She knew how Frank hated her to cry.

But she could not help herself. The tears flowed faster and she had to sniff to get air into her lungs.

"Where the hell's my toast? And what the hell's the matter with you?" he demanded roughly.